On Tuesday, the twentieth of February, Arvada West Senior High School informed the students on a new set of rules to take to improve learning and to keep safety, the school’s number one priority.

Two of the most prominent rules have to do with phones and hall passes. In every class, students must surrender their phones to a teacher, putting their devices in a ‘cubby’ or ‘cell phone holder.’ The new system was put into place due to the observations that Arvada West Principal Dr. Robert Bishop made while watching students in their classes.

“In my first semester observations and walking through classrooms, and early as the start of the second semester I just finally came to the realization that the evolution of where we are with cell phones on campus needed a little bit of help,” Bishop says. “We have always asked that [the students] be responsible and use them appropriately.”

One of the new rules made prohibits students at Arvada West from using the restrooms and hall passes for the first and last ten minutes of class. This helps security find people in the halls who are not supposed to be there.

“We just lost sight of what our practice is around  kids out of the classroom, and I think right after a passing period, you don’t need to go right to the restroom,” Bishop stated.

Along with the new hall rules, other security measures have been put into action to ensure student safety. There is now a desk between the main office and the front doors of the school with someone attending it all day to ensure no unidentified person enters the school without checking in.

Arvada West has not just been starting to improve its safety. At the beginning of the 2017 school year, door alarms were put into the school to help secure the many entrances to the building, “We have this school pretty darn secured. The door alarms have been amazing. I was skeptical last year when they were putting them in … because of the management of it and training the student body. You guys [the students] have been fantastic … I’m really pleased with that,” Bishop said.

Arvada West is reinstating safety to help threats like the ones made recently less frequent and to help the student body stay on task and continue learning. Arvada West will be participating in the walkout on Wednesday, March fourteenth with the schedule being adjusted to show solidarity for the 17 lost in the Parkland, Florida shooting on February 14th, 2018.